Textual Analysis of 'Stooshee Black Heart'

 

Our next textual analysis will be on Stooshe - Black Heart.

The mise-en-scene of the piece follows the hitherto cultural code, the protagonists are dressed similarly to show their unity, and we see many 'vintage' props around them, such as podium staging and vintage camera -also integrating with the retro cinematography.

There are several shots of the female in red sporting a romance with one of the actors in the video, suggesting a narrative romance is taking place, but we see his diverted glances at another girl in the cast... which we can interpret the song is directed at him and his 'black heart'.

The choreography for the piece, instils the era and style we aspire to have, with rhythmic, synchronized movements from all participants. We also noticed the types of movements along with the singing, e.g., movements with microphone stands, are similar to those utilised by 'The Supremes'. 

There is various focus on the three protagonists, but is namely often focused on the one singing a verse, which all three partake in. We see stabs of the narrative consistently, in keeping with our chosen style, whilst still sporting a vintage flare.

Upon the climax of the song, the girl in red (who is blatantly being taken for a fool by the boy at the beginning) is central to the shot, allowing viewers to see her disappointed/hurt reaction to her partner 'playing away from home' -Then the girls sport their feminine attitudes, integrating with The Marvellettes glamorous style and desire to be respected, showing the boy with the 'black heart' that nobody takes them for a fool.

To conclude, we have chosen to take this video as inspiration for our piece and use conventions vis-à-vis Andrew Goodwin, lyrics fitting visuals/ narrative to create our interpretation of a vintage song, and promote it to a contemporary audience. We hope by doing this, we'll be successful in constructing a 'retro' style piece and make our target audience (16-20) aware of the different phases/ representations of women, in a vintage setting, but with females they're familiar with and of similar age.

Our Practice Piece Video

A Timeline of Representations of Women

A timeline of representations of women from meganrobin

Music Piracy

Music piracy involves downloading music illegally without paying for it or without consent from the music company's, therefore infringing copyright laws.
The Digital Economy Act first came into law on 9th April 2010, it stated that:

·         Internet service providers (ISPs) must warn those illegally downloading files with a letter

·         Slow down/suspend internet access for repeat offenders

·         Must disclose the identities of the offenders to the police

·         Those caught illegally downloading files could be fined up to £50,000 for copyright infringement

·         Some websites may also be blocked

Criticisms of The Digital Economy Act

·         Public Wi-Fi- how will providers of public Wi-Fi be affected? Will we have to sign up for acceptable use policies (AUP) to use the internet in cafes and hotels?

·         Should people who are warned or fined end up with a criminal record?

·         Should individuals’ actions result in whole groups of people having their internet connection removed?

·         How can it ever truly be proved who was responsible for downloading the music?

·         Do the majority of the public want this law?

‘the bbc found that 87% of internet users felt internet access should be the’ fundamental right of all people.’

Talk Talk has claimed that 80% of youngsters would continue to download regardless of the bill and that internet service providers are being forced to police this without any workable outcomes. ‘Don’t disconnect us’

·         Can peer to peer files sharing ever be stopped? Doesn’t the music industry simply need to adapt its business model?

·         Why is it the ISPs responsibility to enforce the law?

·         Other countries manage to regulate with legal restrictions, why can’t we? Although countries like America have introduced similar legal restrictions on music piracy, downloading copied music is legal in some countries such as Canada, the Netherlands, Spain and panama, provided that the songs aren’t sold.

LimeWire
      LimeWire was one of the world's most popular peer-to-peer file sharing websites which has recently been shut down after its 4 year legal battle with the U.S music industry (Recording Industry Association of America). It has been estimated that piracy costs the music industry around £200 million per year, meaning record company's are losing money due to peer-to-peer file sharing sites such as LimeWire, The Pirate Bay etc being used to download music/films without copyright.

Representations of Women: The Marvelettes vs. Blurred Lines

In recent years, the music video has become an increasingly popular way of marketing/promoting artists and there music. Comparing music video's from the 60's to present day, it is clear to see that the way women are portrayed has drastically changed. The modern day music industry currently use music video's as there main source of marketing which has led to over sexualised content being featured as it seems like this is the only way to sell a record.
The Marvelettes performance video for 'Please Mr. Postman' (1960's) shows the women as glamorous and classy role models compared to Robin Thicke's video for 'Blurred Lines' which portrays the women sexual objects.

 

The women from the 1960's wore long dresses with glamorous hair where as the women from the present day video are wearing barely any clothes dancing around men who are twice there age.

Robin Thicke has recently faced a lot of controversy regarding his video for 'Blurred Lines' as the x-rated version was band from T.V and some internet sites. The x-rated version showed the young girls topless performing provocative dance moves. Such debate about whether the song/video is presenting women in the right way has led to it being banned from various student unions. However it is mostly the rap/hip hop genre of music which use sexualised content to sell their music today.

 Keeping with the style of music video from the 1960's, we have decided to dress our actors in knee-floor length dresses and give them modest choreography in order to fit with the genre of music we have chosen. We decided not to use provocative outfits/choreography as we feel that this is presenting women in a negative way and shouldn't be used in order to promote sales.

DigiPak Promotion

As part of our A2 course we are producing a music video to the song 'Please Mr. Postman' by The Marvellettes. In order to gain a greater understanding of how the artists of that time period were promoted, I researched older DigiPaks and compared them to more contemporary DigiPaks.

Bobby Hackett !930-1940's

The Beatles 1960's

One Direction 2013

Comparing all three album covers, we can see how the era and genre of the music effects how the artist is promoted. Bobby Hackett was around in the early 1940's, therefore technology is limited and this is reflected in the artists digipak. There is no visual of the artist and very basic colours are used. This could be suggesting that the target audience for that genre of music is more mature than someone who would buy one directions album who use bright colours, as well as a picture of the artist for example. The Beatles album cover features all members of the band like one direction, who are also a pop band. However one direction use more colour in all of their promotional activities, where as The Beatles have stuck to a black and white theme which was more common in that time era. Television in the early 60's was black and white, this could be a reason for why The Beatles have chosen to stick with this theme in their DigiPak. Pop artists today often use pictures of themselves on their album covers/posters etc as part of a way of branding themselves. Often their image and how they are presented to the media would sell their media products rather than their actual music. This contrasts to artists such as Bobby Hackett in the 1940's who hasn't used a picture of himself to sell his product.
In our Digipak we plan to use a mixture of both older and contemporary elements as we have chosen to base our music video on an older song with conventions of modern music video.

Storyboarding

Today we finished storyboarding for our music video 'The Marvellettes Please Mr. Postman'. We have carefully planned and thought through the shots and camera angles we would like in order to capture the era of the song. We have incorporated a variety of different shots which will enable the audience to follow the story which we want to portray. We have used a range of performance as well as narrative elements in our storyboarding as this will bring a more modern twist on an older song.

Meet our actors...

We carefully seleceted the actors for our music video, from pervious experience we required someone reliable, willing, confident and accustomed to acting.

Zaylie

Sophie

Daniella

Isobel

 

We selected these girls to in keep with our contemporary audiences, but all four have been previously trained in acting, theatre and music so they were fitting to what we required.

Tamla Motown

"Motown is an American record company founded by Berry Gordy, Jr. in 1959, the United States. Motown played an important role in the racial integration of popular music by achieving a crossover success. In the 1960s, Motown and its soul-based subsidiaries were the most successful proponents of what came to be known as "The Motown Sound", a style of soul music with a distinct pop influence.
Gordy originally set up two nominally-separate labels (Tamla Records and Motown Records) in 1959. The two labels featured the same writers, producers and artists, and they were both formally incorporated together as Motown Record Corporation (commonly referred to simply as "Motown") on April 14, 1960. " -Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motown 

Berry Gordy, Jr.

 



Motown still has large influences contemporarily, with signed artists such as The Marvellettes, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye, both still invading the charts to this day. However, 'Motown' may stereotypically be viewed as a 'Black label', which is proven wrong through singers Dusty Springfield and Amy Winehouse; White artists taking influence from the Motown genre, singing songs seemingly written for Black artists and through their costume choices, integrate fully with the Motown conventions. 'Vintage' style is often adopted by younger generations, through sixties 'swing' dresses, prominent collars and furious back-combed hair, appearance is still as overtly important to today's generation as it was during the times of 'The Marvellettes'.

 

Shared through

Lyrical analysis for 'The Marvelettes Please Mr. Postman'

Narrative

The target audience of a media product need to quickly understand what is happening. This can be achieved by having a clear narrative. These are a few ways in which narratives can function:

OPEN- This is where questions remain unanswered and the audience are left wondering what will happen next.

CLOSED- This is where all questions are answered and the audience fully knows what is happening/happened.

LINEAR- The narrative is in order.

NON-LINEAR/FRACTURED- This is where the narrative in out of order e.g. a trailer for a film or use of flashbacks.

SINGLE STRANDED- Only one storyline in the media text/product

MULTI-STRANDED- This is where there are several storylines in an overall narrative for example soap operas.

ROLAND BARTHES

Barthes came up with the theory that we use 5 different narrative codes when analysing media products.

1) Action code
2) Mystery code/Enigma Code
3) The Semic Code
4) The Cultural Code
5) Code of Oppositions

In our music video, we plan to use 'The cultural code' in order to make the audience aware of the time period of the artist/single. We are going to make this obvious to the audience by the characters in our video being dressed in typical 60s fashion and also by using props which would of featured in that era.

Research into a new artist

Tich from jorjahmae

Research into an established artist

Beyonce1 from jorjahmae

The Marvelettes

The marvellettes spider diagram from jorjahmae